


The Halloween Special

by Aoshika_October



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Halloween, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Sexual Manipulation, Stockholm Syndrome, alternative universe, symbrock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 15:56:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21322804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aoshika_October/pseuds/Aoshika_October
Summary: Investigative Journalist Eddie Brock goes inside a "haunted house" to make a short investigation for the Halloween Special for the channel where he works. He has the feeling there's much more in that place than everyone knows.
Relationships: Dan Lewis/Anne Weying, Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 13
Kudos: 198





	The Halloween Special

**Author's Note:**

> I know it's been almost a week since Halloween but I wanted to post this so bad! Still, is not very Halloween-themed so I guess is not that bad. I wrote this based on Evanescence's song "Haunted" and the story behind said song. It's almost the same, but Symbrock.   
English is not my first language, so if you have any suggestions for me to improve, I'll appreciate it.

When Eddie woke up, he looked around and tried to make sense of the room he was in this time. It was just a room, with a bed and a nightstand, a wardrobe and a door that most probably lead to a bathroom.

This was the room he needed right now.

He got up, walked to the wardrobe and opened the door. He tried to remember how many nights he had spent in the other rooms, and finally, he decided on four, counting last night.

With his thumbnail, he traced four more marks. He was grouping them on intervals of seven. He counted them and determined he had spent six weeks on this house. One and a half months. 42 days.

Eddie sat down, looking at the marks. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it was already half november. It was chilly, and if not for the fact that, while being trapped here, every one of his needs had been met without problem, he would have been worried about the lack of proper clothes to cover himself. Passing time was the only thing he could really care about.

At first, he had tried keeping track of the time and his experiences in this place with his notebook. The notebook then disappeared, appearing two days later over the countertop of the kitchen, missing the pages where he had written everything that had happened. After that, he had tried in every way he could imagine to keep count of the days: marking the margin of a door with his pen, counting magnets on the fridge, even trying to trace the movements of the sun in the sky.

The door’s paint was as good as new the next day, the magnets rearranged (and later scattered through the floor when he tried to arrange them again) and the windows suddenly went all dark, as if painted with black ink, surrounding him definitely in darkness.

His last resource was to take a knife from the kitchen and trace lines across the skin of his arm, covering them with napkins to keep them from bleeding too much but not healing them, so they would later form scars that would help him to remember each day he spent here.

That night, while he tried to sleep, the voice appeared in his dreams for the first time.

**Not on ourselves! Can’t hurt ourselves! Never! Never again! Not our arm! Not ever! Not!**

**EDDIE!**

That last shout had woken him up, finding his arm unscarred and the door of a wardrobe wide open.

It had been four or five weeks since that. He marked the time that happened with an arrow pointing at the exact marking in the wardrobe’s door, promising himself he would not forget it.

He stood up and went to the bathroom to take a shower. When he finished, he found himself in an entirely different room, with clean clothes folded on a chair, the wardrobe lost again in some place inside this god damned house.

Jeans, underwear, socks and a black, long sleeved t-shirt. As always.

.

.

.

Eddie had come to this house as a part of a pre-recorded “Halloween Special” for the Network. They had begun to work around the first week of October. He and some of his colleagues were assigned to investigate, enter and explore some of San Francisco’s “haunted” places, and Eddie got this old house that had been abandoned for at least two decades. People said it had been property of a scientist that had died alone, no family nor friends that would reclaim any of his belongings or even his body. Since then, there were rumors about people hearing weird sounds coming from the inside of that house, furniture moving by itself and so on.

The really scary part about all this, was the fact that sometimes pets would wander inside the house. When their owners went to look for them, they almost always found the headless corpses of their beloved companions, the fortunate ones not finding anything at all.

There were stories about children that, moved by curiosity, tried to take a glimpse inside the house after hearing voices coming from the inside or even seeing shadows wandering through windows.

That day, Eddie, by his boss’ recommendation, gave a heads up to Anne and Dan that he was going to interview some neighbors and later, at night, enter the house and record some minutes with his cellphone. He needed someone who would notice if anything out of the ordinary happened, and while that neighborhood wasn’t particularly known for being dangerous, entering an old abandoned house at night wasn’t the safest thing to do. He even had decided to make everything by himself, without a crew or even a cameraman to help him, thinking it would make the experience seem more authentic, something like “The Blair’s Witch Project” but without the stupid teenagers and the drugs.

He could always come back with the crew to get some professional shots if needed but, well, he liked Halloween, it was the first time he did some Urban Exploration, and perfectly legal at that, with the permit obtained by the network from the City Hall.

It didn’t seem like the greatest work he had done to date, but it was a little, fun and interesting project he was more than happy to spend a day or two doing.

.

.

.

The first thing he had done was to interview a few neighbors. At first, they were reluctant to speak to him, but Eddie knew how to charm his way with the ladies, and that’s how, after interviewing some kids and their mothers, he got the testimony of one of the oldest residents: a sixty years old little woman who had lived here since the 80’s, and had known the scientist that inhabited the house in question.

“He was isolated most of the time. Didn’t like company, didn’t had visitors, nor family. Me and my husband invited him to dinner one night”.

“And he didn’t come”.

“Oh, no, he did come” she settled a cup of tea in front of him, both of them sitting on her living room, “didn’t talk much, but he was perfectly pleasant, smiling all the time, helping around with the dishes.”.

“I think…he coming to dinner sounds even weirder than if he hadn’t come at all”.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, dear, but I know that it was a shame, we should have invited him before, maybe he could have been a good friend us. He was a charming, intelligent young man, just like you, he must not had been more than 35 years old. Me and my husband were about 40 at the time”.

She gave a sad smile and Eddie was glad he had captured this with his cellphone camera.

“Did he tell you something about what he did? I did some research. He is registered as the owner of the house and a legal resident, but I couldn’t find anything about his work, or his exact career, I mean, a “scientist” can be anything from a biologist to a geologist, don’t you think?”

“Of course, I am well aware of that” she sipped at her cup, “but as I already told you, he didn’t talk much about himself. Well, he said something about being working on a project that had finally worked as he wanted. Maybe soon he could put it to good use. He told us it could be of great benefit to humanity. We thought he was just being overly enthusiastic, so we were happy for him, but we didn’t ask anything more and he didn’t seem too eager to share details, either.”

“But… he couldn’t do any of what he wanted” Eddie guessed. The lady went somber at that.

“He was found dead a week later. Apparently natural causes. He… he had been dead four days. We realized something was wrong when my husband went to invite him for dinner again and… the smell”.

“Of… of course”. Eddie went respectfully quiet for a moment. The woman seemed to be specially affected by the memory, so Eddie didn’t say more. It was her who voiced the conclusion Eddie had come to, probable having thought about it several times before.

“He didn’t have a phone in his house. He didn’t use to have mail waiting for him. We… we were the last human contact he had in his life. I don’t really like thinking about it”.

.

.

.

Eddie stayed with the woman enough to meet her husband, a charismatic old man that shook his hand firmly and offered to drive him home once his exploration ended. Eddie declined, he had brought his bike, he had parked it at the house’s garden, away from view. They wished him good luck from their door when he left. Eddie thought that this had gone even better than he expected.

.

.

.

From the inside, the house was underwhelming, if Eddie was being honest. It looked as if nothing had changed since its owner had died, probably no one had entered this place aside for the police or the occasional nosy neighbor. The crystal windows were broken, the furniture was dusty, the hinges and the handles of doors and drawers rusty with the passing of years, but other than that, it looked as if time had stopped in the 90’s and stayed there, frozen forever. 

Eddie loved his job, so, even if there was nothing interesting to see here, he would deliver it so it seemed at least interesting enough for the Halloween Special. He didn’t have a lamp so he relied on his phone’s lamp, and he thought the play of shadows and lights would help to achieve his intent.

“So, I am here, on the Haunted House of the Mad Scientist, good name huh? I made it up myself” he joked lamely, hoping this could be cut from the final report, “I decided to come alone, and as you probably saw before, I interviewed a couple of people out there. They say something terrifying happens with this place, and today, we’re going to find out”. He directed the camera towards the furniture, focusing on the oldest-looking items and the spider-webs, “as you can see, this place is being kept almost the same as it was the night its owner died, two decades ago. No one has lived here since. People say you can hear noises coming from the inside, voices, chairs moving, lights can be seen through the window, but how is this possible if no one has entered here in such a long time?”

He now angled his camera to the floor, focusing to his own footprints over the dusty wooden panels, “see those? Those are my footprints. There are no more than mine. You can see some other footprints already covered with a layer of dust, so imagine how much time must have passed since someone else entered here”.

He kept walking, commenting on how old some of this things looked, considering the man had died in the 90’s. He was probably the heir of a wealthy family, if one thought about the fact that he didn’t seem to have a job other than to work on his “project” of which he was so proud.

“So far I haven’t seen or heard something out of place, but if you, dear audience detect something in this video, feel free to email me to let me know”, he suggested gleefully, almost cynically, as he walked up the stairs.

About twenty minutes had passed, and, while nothing scary had happened, he had to admit this was, after all, an interesting place, and the story about the scientist probably deserved more than fifteen minutes of the so called “Halloween Special”. He just needed to find a good story to tell and he had the feeling that he was going to get it if he kept looking for it.

He did a little pause at the top of the stairs and checked on some messages he had received.

_-“Hey Ed, are you still in the house? Just making sure”._

Ugh, Dan. He was such a nice guy, Eddie couldn’t hate him for being with Anne even if he tried.

_-“Yup, still here. I let you know when I get home”._

_-“Okay. Btw, we wanted to invite you for brunch tomorrow, there’s a nice place near to the hospital, what do you say?”_

_-“Sounds good man. See you at ten?”_

_-“Ten’s good. Don’t forget to text Anne when you’re back home. She wasn’t happy that you decided to go alone, and to be honest, it didn’t sit good with me either”._

UGH! It was almost painful how nice he was. Eddie sighed and answered something he hoped would end the conversation.

_-“Promise I’ll let you know. See ya’!”_

After this, he glanced around the corridor in front of him. There were three doors, one at either side and one at the end of it. He decided he would explore them before he began recording again.

He went for the one at the end of the corridor, and wasn’t surprised to find it was the bathroom. It was big, almost luxurious, something like a spa at home, aside from the mold in the bath and the rusty faucets. The toilet was certainly dirty, but not filthy. It was just the pass of time, not that its owner was a pig. This house only needed some maintenance and it could be as good as new. Eddie would buy it if he could.

The room at the left was the owner’s room, Eddie guessed. It was almost like a hotel room, clean, impersonal, as if the person that inhabited it had decided not to let a trace of himself in his own home.

Eddie decided that he would do a shot here later, just to fill in if needed, and went to the last room.

This room was, by far, the most interesting one.

There were sheets of paper all over the walls, a table stacked with books, a large blackboard still with drawings and formulas that he certainly didn’t understand. It was as if the man lived here and the rest of the house was there just to help him pretend he was a normal person.

There were plates with petrified food on the floor, as if he had decided to eat sitting against the wall, away from his work. There was another table, and this, _this_ was where Eddie decided this case deserved more. On the table were two notebooks filled with notes and drawings. The drawings were what moved Eddie’s natural curiosity, they were clear, defined, as if made by someone who _knew_ how to draw and not someone who did it because they needed it. They showed a dark substance that seemed to be poured over different surfaces. Other drawings showed the same substance _wrapping_ around plants. Eddie almost let go of the notebook, shocked, when he saw the next drawing: that substance was embracing the body of a cat. And not just enveloping it, but introducing itself into the cat’s nostrils, ears and mouth. The next drawing was the cat, open, an empty carcass, ant the substance beside it in a puddle.

The drawings were detailed, almost as exact as if they were photos. The next one depicted the same thing that had happened with the cat… but the victim now was a human body.

Eddie let the notebook over the table and, excited, took out his phone and activated the camera, using the frontal one first to get a shoot of his own face.

“Guys, you’ll never believe what I am about to show you…”, but when he redirected the camera in front of him he felt a pang on his lower back, as if he was injected in between his vertebrae with a long, thick needle. His hand went lax and his cellphone hit the floor in pieces. The lamp immediately shut and he…

His world went black.

.

.

.

That’s how he had ended here. When he woke up, he was lying on the couch of the living room, but something was different. The place seemed clean, as if somebody had tied up while he was unconscious, getting rid of the dust and the spiderwebs. There was a lamp that gave a warm light (even when he was sure the house no longer had electric service) and he had been wrapped with a soft blanket.

_Must been a dream_, he thought as he got up and looked around, still disoriented by being unconscious for maybe hours. His head hurt. He knew there were too many things out of place, but he didn’t want to think about that right now. He just wanted to go home, and maybe come back later to look for his phone. Maybe he could get Dan to come back with him.

It seemed like a perfect plan, until he reached the door and tried to open it. With no avail. The door seemed to have been secured from the outside while he was asleep inside the house. He didn’t have the slightest idea if there was a key or something…

“Okay, if this is a joke, it’s gone too far already”, he said to no one in particular, playing with the idea that maybe his colleagues were pranking him or something.

There was no response. Not that he expected any, to be honest.

He went to a window and tried to open it, but it was as if it was glued to its margins.

“For fuck’s sake…” Eddie was sick of this place, so he elbowed the window, the glass shattered but didn’t fall, and when he stopped… the glass came together again, perfectly smooth, as if nothing had happened.

“Fuck… fuck, no… it… it can’t be!”

Eddie decided this had to be a nightmare.

He ran to the door again and he charged against it with all the force he could, with the whole weight of his body, hard enough to make the door shake and the frames on the walls rattle, but not enough to open. Eddie tried the same, lunging now against a window, getting the same results as before.

He was suddenly out of breath.

“Help me!” he screamed, hitting the window with his open hand, trying to pry outside, hoping someone would pass by and see him. But, outside, the street was completely empty. “HELP ME!”

Maybe he was making a fuss over nothing. Maybe there was a good explanation for all of this. Maybe he was too anxious, maybe if he calmed he could see the way out of this place. But there was something Eddie couldn’t help but feel in the back of his head, like someone’s eyes set on the back of his neck permanently, like the goosebumps you feel when someone else’s breathing touches your skin.

Eddie was convinced that he wasn’t alone in this place. And that thought made him spend the rest of the day, and a whole night, against a corner, refusing to sleep, to say anything more, or even to try and find something to eat. God. He was starving.

.

.

.

When he had thought nothing was going to happen unless he started moving around in the house, he went to the kitchen, surprised to find the fridge working, stacked to the top with all kinds of frozen food, water bottles and chocolate. At first he was afraid to try it, the food could very well be poisoned, or at least had drugs in it, but once he had taken the tater tots and the nuggets out of the oven, the smell had been so good he didn’t care about anything else. He hadn’t noticed how much he had needed to eat something. It was terrifying.

With the food issue kind of sorted out, Eddie decided to keep track of time and to take notes of everything he noticed around this place. On the second and third nights in the house was that he noticed that there were more than the two rooms he had noticed the first night. And worse of all, the rooms _moved_. And moved him while he was asleep. And there was no explanation he could come up with to ease his thoughts about this.

Trying not to lose his mind when he couldn’t find his way to the bathroom or the kitchen, because the rooms had decided to swap on him once again, Eddie had tried to mark his way into this place, tried to leave behind tracks, and to write even the littlest of things he could notice, but it was then when all his attempts were rejected by this invisible force that seemed to have him completely shackled to this place and to a single moment in time. There wasn’t night or day, here or there, not inside or outside, not anybody else, just Eddie, Eddie alone, hungry, sleepless and slowly going completely crazy.

“LET ME GO!” he pleaded by what he thought was the second week, “PLEASE, LET ME GO! LET ME GO!”

“Please…please, let me go…”

His tears disappeared almost as soon as they reached the floor.

.

.

.

He had calmed (or maybe just numbed) somewhere at the end of the second week. Having been given the option to scrap the back of the wardrobe’s door to keep track of time helped him, but the discovery of an old entertainment room helped even more. In this place, he found shelves of books, an old tv, and an even older radio. There was an ancient and comfortable looking couch. On the shelves beside the tv he found stacks of VHS movies and a VHS player he marked for later, and spent a whole afternoon trying to get some signal for the tv or the radio, unsuccessfully.

Later, he fell asleep watching “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, and woke up the next day bundled on the most comfortable bed he had found while being here. He cuddled up more against the pillows.

He still felt alone.

** _Never alone, Eddie._ **

He pretended not having heard that.

.

.

.

His days went something like this: he would wake up and analyze the room he was in. If he was in the room with the wardrobe, he would mark the days that had passed since the last time he had been there, and count, to remember how much time had passed.

He would then go to the bathroom to take a shower. Sometimes there was a door in the same room but sometimes he had to go out in search for it. If he found the kitchen first, he would have breakfast. A plateful of tater tots and coffee, almost the same thing he would get at lunch and dinner. At first he had thought that this poor diet would make him sick, but after something like three weeks he had decided that nothing seemed wrong- aside from the circumstances, of course.

Sometime later in the day he would find the entertainment room, and he would spend the next hours watching movies, reading or numbly listening to the radio, having found a station that only seemed to play music from the 60’s to the 90’s, never going to white noise nor being interrupted by a DJ or a commercial. It was ok with him.

He had accepted the fact that he would not be rescued by the fourth week.

To be honest, he was expecting to go crazy, to be killed, or to die of… something. Anything. He didn’t think he would be kept here for longer and things could only get worse. He could be tortured, or maybe whoever was keeping him here was looking for revenge and only expecting the right moment to end his misery with a horrible death.

Anyways, whatever happened from now on, he concluded that he could only be grateful to live one more day.

.

.

.

At some point along the second month, the voice became louder. He had only heard it in dreams, but one day the dream became so vivid, Eddie lamented he had no way to write it down when he woke up. He had dreamed with shadows, with a dark substance dancing around him, and even when at first he had been scared, as the dream went on he found himself feeling safe, caressed by light, soft and cold tendrils that massaged his muscles and lulled him to rest, after all these weeks in which he had slept in anguish, without a moment to really feel relaxed.

When he woke up the next morning, he took a deep breath, remembering the voice whispering his name. Now, completely aware of his situation, of his surroundings and of the fact that he wasn’t asleep anymore,he was terrified.

.

.

.

The creature lurked in the darkness. It was constantly waiting for him to move, hidden behind doors, under chairs, waiting behind the shower curtain when he bathed, under his bed when he slept. The creature pronounced his name, letter by letter, whispering it against his ear when Eddie watched a movie or read a book.

At night, Eddie felt it moving over his skin while he pretended to be asleep. He tried not to react, not to shake despite the fear he felt not knowing what this creature could be.

**_Sweet dreams, Eddie_**.

.

.

.

The fourth month mark had passed already. One night, Eddie woke up feeling wave of heat inside his guts. He opened his eyes, seeing a tent on his sheets, and concluded the only thing that could be happening was…

_Oh, no_.

Of course, it had been weeks (months) since he had had any action, and while being here he hadn’t even wanted to get off by himself, but right now, his erection was painful and even the light movements that caused him to rub against the sheets (and the heavy duvet over him) were torture.

He was still somewhat asleep when he fisted his erection with one hand and began moving it up and down.

_Oh, god. _

It was delicious, his member super sensitized, his muscles relaxed, the cold against his skin. The tendrils caressing his arms, his legs.

_No…no… not this…_

It was there with him, and its voice returned to his ear, whispered his name, rushed, panicked, excited, aroused, and with that voice Eddie came and came and came…

…

When Eddie woke up in the morning, he found an enormous stain on his sheets. He wasn’t sure what could be worse, the creature being here, with him while he rubbed one out, or inside his head, in his subconscious, a hidden desire Eddie never wanted to dig out.

He went even more numb after that.

.

.

.

He felt worse every day that passed.

He spent the days curled on the couch of the entertainment room or pressed against the walls on the hallway looking at the ceiling, focusing in a single stain or a cracking in the paint or in the way the light bulb flicked from time to time. He stopped watching movies and listening to music on the radio, now he was hyperaware. The movies gave him headaches, and he was beginning to hear the voice whispering his name through the radio.

He wanted everything to just stop.

He ate less. He wasn’t drinking any water. His muscles ached and he was afraid to sleep. He wasn’t even sure if he slept anymore or if his tired consciousness just made him hallucinate in order to make him think he was sleeping.

And when he’d felt like he was really asleep, the tendrils would come and torment him, making him feel…good. It was awful to think he was so deprived from contact with other people that feeling this thing that hunted him every day made him feel better. He cried in his sleep. And he woke up to find his pillow as wet as his sheets.

.

.

.

Six months, one week, three days.

When he did this last mark he signaled it with a cross. Born and raised as a catholic guy and all that shit.

“Well, I don’t know who put me in here”, he called to no one, standing in the living room and pacing with short steps, “but if this is what you wanted, congratulations!”.

He decided on a specific wall and fixed his eyes on a point only he could see.

“I can see it in the papers, “How long can a human male resist isolated form everything and everyone in the world? Check page six to find out!””, he screamed like a madman, “here you have it: six months, one week and three days! One hundred and seventy seven days! Is this what you wanted? Huh? You wanted to see if I would cry, if I’d break down completely? If I’d tried to end my own suffering? Here you have your answer too! I’m going FUCKING CRAZY! They should give me a FUCKING DOCTORATE FOR THAT CONCLUSION!”

He took two steps behind.

“And here’s another little bit of data for you: the isolated human male tormented by a _disgusting_ creature that violates him in his sleep loses his will to live and your hypothesis was indeed correct, HE KILLS HIMSELF!”

With this, he charged head first against the wall. The pain subsided almost immediately, when his vision went dark.

.

.

.

  1. **_ NO, NO, NO! EDDIE NO! _****_EDDIE MINE, MINE MINE! CANNOT DIE, CANNOT, WE FORBIDE IT, EDDIE CANNOT DIE, WILL NOT DIE! EDDIE IS MINE!_**

** _EDDIE!_ **

.

.

.

Eddie did not die. But, oh, he wished he had, when the tendrils stroking his body enveloped him completely, touching every inch of his skin. Entered his lips, kissing him deeply. Rubbed his erection. Penetrated him. Raped him. He tried to move, to escape from this wicked fate. But the creature kept moving all over him, owning him, violating him.

Making love to him. Eddie went pliant when he concluded it wasn’t worth his trouble. He handed himself over.

He woke up to a web of oily, black goo spread over his naked body. A single, thin tendril was stroking his face. When it pressed against his lips, Eddie kissed it.

.

.

.

When the creature ordered him to sleep, Eddie allowed himself to sleep. When the creature whispered him to eat something, Eddie went looking for the kitchen and ate. When the creature’s voice suggested him to go rest, he went out of the kitchen and found the entertainment room and watched a movie.

A dark tentacle manifested, making its way between Eddie’s arms and he hugged it against his chest.

.

.

.

The creature took him again in the couch. It ordered him to eat dinner, and Eddie went and ate. Later he went to take a bath and then to sleep, aware that the creature would have its way with him once he was in bed again. It did. He didn’t care.

.

.

.

Sometimes, when he wasn’t so numb, he cared.

“Can I…oh, god…at least, your name…?”

**Name…?**

“Yes. How… how can I call you?”

**He called us Venom.**

“Who?”

**Him.**

“I don’t like how it sounds. I… I am scared… of you… already…”.

**We don’t like it either.**

“Can I… can I… call you…. V?”

**If it pleases you.**

.

.

.

Venom…V, was with him all the time, but they were always lurking in the shadows, their communication with Eddie only being whispered orders and short conversations before sleeping, after having their way with him. Eddie allowed it.

That’s how he learned that V had been here alone since the scientist died. They didn’t know what he was trying to achieve, and to be honest, Eddie didn’t care about this anymore. He just wanted to remain asleep, if that could spare him from having to face his reality all the time: he was trapped in this house, doing the same every day, eating the same, being followed in the darkness by that creature that spent the nights tormenting him…

He just wanted to die. But every time he had this thought, much to his horror, Venom seemed to notice. Venom would then embrace him, cocooning him inside its substance, keeping him from moving, from thinking, drugging him with warm and darkness and its velvety touch.

Eddie found himself falling slave to this creature, willing to be with it, willing to stay inside its tendrils, and the thought was as perturbing during the day as it was soothing during the nights.

.

.

.

“Show me your face”.

**You will not like it.**

“You don’t know that. Do you doubt me, my love?”

**Don’t want to scare you.**

“Never, V. You are the best thing I have in my life. I would never be scared of you”.

It had been nine months. Eddie had kept counting, but he had decided that if a whole year passed, he would stop. Didn’t matter anymore. He had forgotten everything outside this house, now his world. Venom was his lover, took care of him, fed him, cherished him, helped him sleep and kept him safe, alive and sane. Venom was everything to him and he was Venom’s darling, Venom’s love.

Eddie didn’t need anything else.

Venom slowly formed something like a torso in front of him. Eddie watched as the slime that was its body formed a pair of shoulders and arms that went to his waist immediately. Then a head appeared, and Eddie observed while a mouth filled with long, sharp teeth and a muscular tongue formed first, followed by the rest of the head, with two eyes, big, white, glossy, deep. To anyone else, it would be terrifying. To Eddie, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“Oh, V… you are gorgeous”.

Venom purred against him. Took him in its arms, cradled him against its chest and kissed his neck until Eddie fell asleep.

.

.

.

Sometimes, Eddie remembered.

He remembered Anne and Dan. He wondered if they had been worried about him.

He remembered his job. He wondered if people still thought about him.

He remembered his home. His deranged apartment that he sometimes hated and sometimes was a place of comfort and rest.

He remembered San Francisco, not his city, not New York, but still his place, his streets.

And then, even inside Venom’s arms, he felt lonely again.

.

.

.

**I love you.**

“I know”.

**Want to make you happy.**

“I know”.

**You are not happy.**

“Not right now.”

**Eddie… what can I do to make you happy? I have done everything I can think of. I give you food. I keep you safe. I help you sleep. I keep you strong and healthy. I give you pleasure. What can I do Eddie? You feel distressed. I don’t like it when you feel like this.**

“I know, V. I’m sorry”.

**Why are you not happy, Eddie? I try. I have waited years for you. You coming to me was the greatest thing that could have happened to me. You are mine. You are perfect. Give yourself to me, my love. I cherish your every breath. I love you. I adore you.**

Overwhelmed by the rush of feelings and sensation traveling in his veins, Eddie cried. He loved Venom, but he didn’t want to be here anymore. He wanted his life back. He wasn’t even sure if he really loved Venom, maybe he just loved it because it was the sole thing that helped him to be sure that he was still alive. That he was still capable to feel, to think.

“I love you too, V. I just…”, Eddie curled on himself. Venom embraced him, caressing his skin, “I…”

**What can I do? Eddie? I want you to stay. Stay with me, Eddie, stay. Do not go anywhere. Please, Eddie, please. Want you with me. Forever, Eddie. **

“V… oh, V…”

**I love you. Stay. Please stay.**

Eddie thought about what Venom was implying.

“V?”

**Eddie…. Please, Eddie…**

Venom was scared. Venom was sad, terrified, feeling that Eddie wanted to go, wanted to leave this place and leave Venom behind.

But also…

“V, you could release me? Let me go?”

**Eddie…**

“Venom… Venom, please, please, let me go…”

Venom’s voice sounded broken, agonizing after hearing this.

**No, Eddie… Eddie, do not want you to go, please, Eddie…**

“Then come with me. Come with me, we’re going home…”

**Can’t leave here, can’t leave. If I leave I die. Not leave. Eddie stays with me, forever.**

“Release me, Venom, please, please…. Venom… I’m going crazy, please let me go, let me go!”

**NO!** Venom was furious, **WILL NOT LET EDDIE GO. EDDIE STAY! EDDIE IS MINE!**

Eddie shivered, once again falling to pieces inside Venom’s arms, allowing it to keep him, to make him feel safe and owned again.

Eddie didn’t want to keep discussing this, if it brought distress to Venom. He needed Venom to know he loved it, and he would never leave it behind, even at the promise to go back to his past life. This was his life now, and he wanted to be here, he wanted to be with Venom, he wanted to be loved and protected.

This was his life. He would not leave, if that was what Venom wanted, Eddie would stay here, with his beloved, forever.

.

.

.

Eddie was happy only when Venom was with him. He ate the bare minimum. He spent long hours bathing and sleeping without dreams. He didn’t talk, knowing that Venom could understand him anyway, living inside his head.

Eye bags appeared on his face. His cheeks were hollow. His mind was mute.

But when Venom embraced him, a smile appeared on his face and he hoped that was enough.

He was withering like a rose. One petal at the time.

.

.

.

Venom kissed him. Eddie closed his eyes and suddenly knew he would not open them again.

**Free, Eddie. Deserve to be free.**

.

.

.

Anne was drinking her morning coffee. Dan had make breakfast and left to the hospital in a hurry, and now, she was alone, mumbling with her own thoughts.

It had been almost a year.

After Dan had messaged Eddie that night, neither of them were worried that he didn’t notify them of being back home. The next day, they waited for him at the place where they would have brunch, but when he didn’t appear, without calling to let them know or even send a message, Anne began to worry that something could have happened to him. When they tried to phone him, the call went directly to voicemail.

Anne tried to remain calm. Maybe he had just come home tired and was still asleep, maybe his phone had run out of battery.

During the day, she and Dan tried to contact him with the same results.

The next day, Eddie’s boss called, Anne was still registered as his emergency contact. Eddie had vanished. His boss had tried to reach to him with no avail, and he was worried because Eddie had insisted on going alone to the house even knowing the risks.

She and Dan went to his apartment, knowing that he kept a key under the doormat, but they didn’t find him there. The apartment was as normal as it could be, no signs of having being broken in or of someone being assaulted.

Eddie’s laptop was on the couch in front of the television. The bed was unmade and there were dirty dishes in the kitchen. As if Eddie could return at any moment.

Eddie’s bike wasn’t there.

She and Dan went to the “Haunted House” and found Eddie’s bike parked in the garden. They went to the door and found it closed. They screamed Eddie’s name through the shattered windows, but the echo was the only answer they received.

They reported Eddie as missing. The police began to investigate, and they found Eddie’s phone inside the house, in pieces. They got to rescue the memory, in there, the videos he had recorded inside the house.

A police agent showed Anne and Dan the last one, where they could see Eddie’s excited face as he said he had something to show at the camera. Then he moved his phone to focus on, probably, the thing that had gotten him so interested, only to be interrupted by a groan and the messy movements of light and shadows as he let go of the phone and it hit the floor, the video ending abruptly.

The man asked them if that video meant something to them. But what could have they say? Eddie was passionate about his work. Clearly something had happened while he was working, but what now? There were not footprints, no tracks, no clothes, no blood to investigate, as if Eddie had simply vanished right on that spot.

She had felt to powerless. Dan had been supportive, he didn’t have to but he had, and she was grateful that he was so understanding.

She was thinking about this, coincidentally, when her phone ringed, an unregistered number.

“Umh, hi?”

“Hi…uh, miss Weying?”

“Yeah?”

“I…I am Mrs. Cox, remember me? I… live in the same building as Mr. Brock. We met one day when you were asking the neighbors if anyone had seen him and gave us your number”.

“Oh, yeah, I remember, Mrs. Cox… how… how can I help you?”

“Well, I didn’t know if I should have done this but… I swear I just saw Mr. Brock arriving to the building and going up the stairs. I was in the ground floor retrieving my mail when I saw him”.

“Oh gods are… are you sure? I mean…”

The woman sounded nervous, as if she had seen a ghost, and, well, Anne couldn’t blame her.

“I… I came to his apartment and… I found the door open. Not completely open, just… as if someone had entered and forgot to close completely. I can hear snores… I… I don’t want to go inside, miss Weying, I didn’t know what else to do…”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes”.

.

.

.

Anne’s knees felt weak when she and Mrs. Cox entered the room. The poor woman was trembling behind her, with her bony fingers clutching at her jacket.

“Oh god, it’s him? Mr. Brock?”

Anne came closer to the bed and pulled off the duvet. When she saw Eddie curled on himself, so skinny and pale, her heart almost broke.

“Yeah…yeah, it’s him. Let’s call the police”.

But first, she called Dan.

.

.

.

When Eddie woke up, he had to turn his face away, blinded by the white light. He was then assaulted by a strong smell; something too deep, too clean. An unfamiliar bed, an incessant white noise.

A hospital. He was in a hospital.

“Oh thank God, you’re awake”.

Hearing Dan for the first time after so much time was weird, as if Eddie’s ears had to tune again to the sound. It sounded far away at first. When he was able to open his eyes and see him, Dan was looking at him, not as a doctor, more like a friend. It was soothing. Kind of.

“Hey Dan”, he croaked, his throat sore for the lack of real use.

Dan walked to him and put a hand on his shoulder. There was a long moment of silence, until Dan could not stand anymore and took a seat beside Eddie’s bed, fidgeting with his fingers and looking at the floor.

“What happened to you?” he asked, but judging by his tone, Eddie wasn’t sure he was expecting an answer. Dan looked at him and Eddie tried to smile, “Do you have any idea how long you were missing? Almost a year, Eddie”.

“Ten months”.

“What?”

“Ten months, two weeks and five days”.

Dan only looked at him, dumbfounded. Eddie gave him a sheepish smile.

“I counted”.

“_What happened to you_?” Dan asked again, and Eddie just kept smiling, “you are mostly ok, but it seemed as if you had not slept in weeks. You are almost anemic, and… Eddie? Were you kidnaped?”

Eddie didn’t answer. Dan was such a nice guy, it was obvious he was having a hard time trying to be stern while he interrogated Eddie.

“Eddie, I need to know. If someone did something to you… I need to run tests. I tried to put you in the MRI machine and you screamed like crazy…”

“Someone did. But I’m free now. And the MRI hurt”.

“I…I guess.” Dan was obviously startled. He seemed like he didn’t know what to do with himself.

“I’m okay, Dan. Even if I told you what happened, you wouldn’t believe me”.

Dan kept looking at him silently. Finally, he sighed and pated Eddie’s shoulder again.

“Alright. Anne will come to visit later, remember you can’t answer her that, if you do, she’ll kill you”.

As Dan made his way outside the room, Eddie called after him.

“How long will I be here?”

“A week, at least. You are under observation until we can discard any problem that you may have”.

“Thank you, Dan”.

Dan gave him a little smile and left the room.

.

.

.

After a week of Anne’s sobbing relief/rage, Dan worried smiles and countless, unsuccessful attempts at interrogation by the police, Eddie was released from the hospital and let to go back to his apartment. Anne and Dan drove him and made him dinner, and stayed there with him until bedtime. Eddie felt like a child, but he was grateful nonetheless.

Eddie took a bath and went to his room. He crawled into his sheets (clean, fresh and soft, thanks to Anne), and pressed his head against his pillow.

He closed his eyes.

“Hey, love”, he muttered, with his eyes still closed, “come here. I need to see you”.

Venom’s head formed slowly, crawling inside Eddie’s arms, facing him with its vicious smile.

**Hi, Eddie.**

“Hi baby. How do you like your new home?”

Venom purred, his eyes curving happily into thin slits.

**Perfect, Eddie. Just like you. Mine forever.**

Its head nuzzled under Eddie’s chin.

“Yours my dear. Yours forever. Oh love, I thought you hadn’t made it. I thought I was alone, I thought…”

**Not alone. Never alone, Eddie. We made it.**

“Yes, we did…”

**Free?**

“Yes. Now we’re both free”.


End file.
